Technical Field: This invention relates generally to a method of providing a keyless and dual mode contribution and gift commitment management device to maximize contribution and gift commitments and device therefor, particularly, it relates to an electronic contribution or gift commitment management terminal or peripheral that provides for the entry and recordation of contribution and gift commitments extremely efficiently by only requiring a single action on the part of contributors or gift givers in one mode of operation, and provides for a second mode of operation that provides for contributors and gift givers to make successive contribution or gift commitments that are their contribution of gift commitment preferences. The invention provides a streamlined method of fund raising and gift making and providing substantiation for contributions and gifts made to fund raising organizations and gift recipients that maximizes that making of and consummation of monetary contribution or gift commitments.
Fund-raising organizations and recipients of gifts are typically assisted in the solicitation of contributions and gifts through the use of pledges, and the like. A contributor or gift giver is requested to make a pledge, and then later to honor the pledge. A problem with this type of fund-raising is that a number of pledges do not get honored. Some contributors or gift givers forget about their pledge. Another problem is that when a pledge is solicited the contributor or gift giver may not have his check book with him or may not have adequate cash on hand to make a contribution or gift. Moreover, the contributor's or gift giver's financial situation may have changed between the making of a pledge and the honoring the pledge so that he no longer has adequate resources, even though the contributor or gift giver had adequate resources available at the time a pledge was made.
Moreover, the impulse for a contributor or gift giver to make a pledge is maximized at the time a pledge is solicited. However, the impulse dissipates over time, and as such when it comes time to honor the pledge and consummate the pledge (at a time remote from when the pledge was solicited and made) the contributor or gift giver generally does not have the same desire to do so. In any event, in such situations fund raising organizations or gift recipients lose pledged contributions and gifts. There exists a need for an apparatus and method that allows a fund-raising organization or gift recipient to capture the impulse of a contributor or gift giver to make a contribution or gift commitment and consummate a contribution or gift prior to the dissipation of the impulse of the contributor or gift giver to make the contribution or gift commitment.
If a contributor or gift giver is a cardholder and wishes to make a contribution or gift at a fund-raising event by way of an information bearing card, for example a credit or debit card, there is no convenient way available for the contributor or gift giver to make a contribution or gift conveniently or rapidly. Hence, the contributor's or gift giver's ardor, impulse, and desire to make a contribution or gift will dissipate before a contribution or gift, by way of cash or check, can be obtained from the card bearing contributor or gift giver.
Another possibility is that a fund raising campaign or gift recipient may have a short time period allocated for the solicitation of contributions and gifts. Known information bearing card processing terminals require a procedure of verification of authorization of amounts of the contributions and gifts, validity of the cardholder's accounts, or identity of the cardholder for each encounter and are thus too slow for passing the device from contributor or gift giver to contributor or gift giver. Consequently, due to the inconvenience a cardholder is less likely to make a contribution or gift. Moreover, these types of terminals do not allow a plurality of cardholders to sequentially make contributions and gifts rapidly during a time allocated to the contribution or gift process to be practical. There exists a need for a fund-raising contributions and gifts management terminal or peripheral that will allow for the immediate recordation of contributions or gifts in a short amount of time.
Interposing a verification of authorization step between sequential contributions or gifts results in delay, that further inconveniences a group of contributors or gift givers who are cardholders making them less likely to contribute by information bearing card. Interposing a request for authorization further raises the specter that where a group of sequential contributors or gift givers, 1 through n, are solicited for contributions and gifts, the ardor and desire of the nth contributor or gift giver in the sequence will have dissipated (e.g. the nth contributor or gift giver grows impatient or looses his desire to make a gift or contribution), by the time contributor or gift giver 1 through contributor or gift giver n-1 have recorded contribution or gift information, requests for authorization have been obtained for each contribution or gift, signatures for each contribution or gift have been obtained, or a combination thereof. There exists a need for a contributions and gifts management terminal and method that does not interpose a request for authorization between a plurality of sequential contributions or gifts whereby contributors or gift givers are not inconvenienced and the ardor to make a contribution or gift is captured in time and space.
Known methods by which a contributor or gift giver makes a contribution or gift do not induce or facilitate the making of a contribution or gift in that when approached by a fund-raiser or gift recipient, a contributor or gift giver may not have cash on him to make a contribution or gift. Moreover, a contributor or gift giver may not have his check book with him. Hence, there is a high probability that the fund raiser or gift recipient will not receive any contribution or gift from an individual if that is the case. There exists a need for a contributions and gifts management fund-raising terminal that immediately records card contributions and gifts by cardholders, and a method of fund-raising and gift making that induces and facilitates the making of a contribution or gift.
Furthermore, processing of contributions and gifts is costly and generally requires time and resources: to scout out contribution or gift prospects, to solicit a pledge on behalf of a fund-raising organization or gift recipient, to have a contributor or gift giver fill out a pledge card, to have the contributor or gift giver honor the pledge, and considerable time and resources to process a pledge made by cash or check to get it into the fund-raising organization's or gift recipient's account. There exists a need for a quicker, more efficient, less costly method and apparatus to solicit, and manage contributions and gifts.
Further, known methods by which a contributor or gift giver makes a contribution or gift allow for the external stimulus that induces the making of a contribution or gift to dissipate before the contribution or gift is consummated. With respect to pledges, known pledging methods remove the consummation of the contribution or gift process in time and space from the point where an external stimulus for inducing the making of a contribution or gift is exerted on a contributor or gift giver or on a group of contributor or gift givers or gift givers. The problem of removing the consummation of the contribution or gift process in time and space from the point of exertion of maximum stimulus, is that the impulse to make a contribution or gift decays and dissipates over time. As the impulse dissipates over time a contributor or gift giver is less likely to consummate the contribution or gift or less likely to contribute a larger contribution or gift amount than he or she would otherwise give if the consummation of the contribution or gift process were to occur near the point of maximum stimulation to make a contribution or gift.
By way of example, where a fund-raiser or gift recipient solicits a pledge from a contributor or gift giver the solicitation of a pledge, and pledge commitment is usually made during a point close to the maximum stimulus to the prospective contributor or gift giver to make a contribution or gift. However, a pledge commitment is generally honored at a time and place remote from the time and place the pledge commitment was solicited and made. Interposing a period of time between the solicitation and making of a pledge and honoring of a pledge results in a dissipation of the impulse to make a contribution or gift. The result is that fund-raisers and gift recipients are usually required to make several follow-ups solicitations in order to consummate the contribution or gift, e.g. actually get the contributor or gift giver to fill out a check in the amount of the contribution or gift, and mail the check to the fund-raising organization or gift recipient.
Since the contributor or gift giver has at this point been far separated in time and space from the external stimulus applied to make the contribution or gift, the impulse to make a contribution or gift has decayed and dissipated, and it is more difficult to consummate the contribution or gift. There exists a need for a method of facilitating, consummating, and inducing a monetary contribution or gift that allows the contribution or gift to be consummated at a time and place where the impulse, or the external stimulus creating the impulse, to make a contribution or gift is greatest. There exists a need for a fund-raising contributions and gifts management terminal and method that obtains successful consummations of contribution or gift prior to the dissipation of the impulse or motivation to make a contribution or gift.
Fund-raisers and gift recipients are faced with limited resources that include man-power resources, and other tangible resources. By way of example, assuming that a fund-raising organization has a plurality of simultaneous events competing for man-power, a fixed group of resources with which to gather and solicit contributions or gifts, and a scenario where it would be logistically impossible to service all of the competing events, a fund-raising organization must allocate its resources in such a way as to maximize the contributions and gifts over the competing events. There exists a need for a method of allocating the resources of a fund-raising organization that will maximize the quantity and size of contributions and gifts over a number of competing events given a fixed amount of resources.
Similarly, assuming that a fund-raising organization or gift recipient has a multiplicity of prospective contributor or gift givers at a single event, a fixed group of resources with which to gather and solicit contributions or gifts at a single event and a limited amount of time during which to gather contributions and gifts, and a scenario where it would be logistically impossible to solicit all of the prospective contributors or gift givers, a fund-raising organization or gift recipient must allocate its resources in such a way as to maximize the contributions and gifts during the single event. There exists a need for a method of dispersing, circulating, and allocating the resources of a fund-raising organization during an event that will maximize the quantity and size of contributions and gifts given a fixed amount of resources. That is, there exists a need for a method of allocating contribution management terminals to maximize results of contribution or gift sessions that are generally conducted with limited staffing, limited seed money, and a lack of volunteers.
A further problem is that when a solicitor of contributions and gifts contacts a contribution or gift prospect, he or she generally has no background information concerning the prospect's historical propensity to give or his ability to give, e.g. his or her affluence. As a result the solicitor may request a contribution amount that is less than the amount that the prospect has the ability, propensity, or means to absorb. Hence, the contribution potential of an individual prospect may not be maximized. There exists a need for a contributions and gifts management terminal that can provide message prompts corresponding to a contributor or gift giver's or gift giver's ability to give, historical propensity to give, and that provides the ability to determine how large of a contribution or gift to request based on a prospect's perceived ability to contribute.
A further problem is risk of loss associated with the large amount of contributions or gifts that are stored on a contributions and gifts management terminal or peripheral. A contributions and gifts management terminal may have tens of hundreds of successive contributions or gifts stored thereon representing tens of thousands of dollars of contributions and gifts. Loss or damage to a single terminal may jeopardize a significant number of contributions and gifts resulting in the great loss of the information concerning the contributions or gifts. There exists a need for a method of safe-guarding and fail-safe apparatus for safe-guarding the multiplicity of contributions or gifts stored on contribution management terminals.
Gift recipients have no convenient way of facilitating the making of gifts at social occasions by way of information bearing card. There social occasions include weddings, birthday parties, christenings, funerals, other religious rites, and the like. There exists a need for a method of facilitating and inducing the making of monetary gifts made by information bearing card that immediately records successive gifts rapidly at weddings, birthday parties, baptisms, graduations, anniversaries, and the like. There also exists a need for a contributions and gifts management terminal or peripheral that increases the immediate recordation of a plurality of successive by eliminating portions of the decision making process surrounding the making of a plurality of successive contributions including the time needed to select a preferred gift amount.
It would be highly desirable to solve the variety of problems enumerated above facing fund raisers and gift recipients, and members of fund-raising organizations in soliciting contributions and gifts by way of information bearing cards. It is an object of the present invention to solve the variety of problems enumerated above facing fund raisers and gift recipients.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a fund-raising and gift giving method and contributions and gifts management terminal, and system that can collect, analyze, and display statistical information associated with a contribution or gift or a plurality of respective contributions and gifts and provide useful quantitative data.